History

Key words

Abstract

Although the translation of foreign proper names into Romanian before its modern stage is insufficiently explored, it is known that the process is characterized (as the whole Romanian writing of the time) by the lack of generally valid norms. The process was influenced by various factors, including: the existence of different alphabets, orthographic and phonetic systems; the influence of the source-text vs. the existence of traditional pronunciation and writing patterns; the translation of a proper name from various languages (French, German, Italian, etc.); the diversity of proper names; the translator’s personality (linguistic knowledge, cultural formation). Starting from the translation strategies adopted by translators, our aim is to analyse the way in which the toponyms from three historical texts translated into Romanian from German in pre-modern stage (1780–1830) were adapted to the formal system of Romanian.